Let's not have Malala Day just once a year. Really, every day is and should be Malala Day, when all children get to feel the power of the pen, the book, the tablet, and best of all, his or her own valuable story, written and shared for all the world to benefit.

All of our children have the right to a quality education and to learn every month of the year. Let us, this year in 2013, commit to every child across the country that we will bring their passions and interests to life.

Today at Bellevue Hospital there will be a joyful celebration when the ReadMobile will deliver the books to the children and restore the much loved library to its original abundance. When the families will read their much loved books together and the children will smile, even in spite of whatever pain they are suffering.

There is just one innovation that has withstood the test of time, fought off wars and conflict, stood tall in the face of adversity and adapted itself to the different means by which it is conveyed. This is the power of story itself.

On World Read Aloud Day, I honor the many authors who write for children, for their tender care of the precious lives and understandings of children. Of their fears, hopes and dreams. Of using language to say, beloved child, you are never alone.

Literacy has all kinds of benefits that we might not associate immediately with reading and writing. The stories we read and write and share have the power to transcend physical borders as well as boundaries of race and religion.

Support the Stand Up for Girls Rally to help each mother and daughter, however disadvantaged, speak of her own searing history -- her elders, her children, her men, her world. The rest of woman -- and mankind requires this.